Birol Başkan, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute whose research broadly focuses on religion and political order in the Middle East, spoke to Ahval about how Islamism has incorporated nationalism in Turkey and the characteristics of the country’s “religious market”.

Twelve months of Erdoğan

Political repression and curtailed freedoms have earned Turkey a troubling reputation abroad in recent years. For generations of western artists and intellectuals in the 20th century, though, the country was a haven, and many congregated in Istanbul to lead a lifestyle of freedom, far from the Cold War repression of their own countries.